homelab running linux mint with about 60 docker containers about 45w, meassured at the socket (2HDD)
this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2026
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I’m drawing 4.474kWh per day on average, and drew 139 kWh over the last month.
I have EcoFlow batteries on both A and B PDUs.
Stuff that can be powered off (mining, redundant power supplies) gets the wall outlet feeding ups b and pdu B turned off at 4pm and turned back on at 9pm to align with my time of use rate plan.
About 300-400 watts. I should put it on a smart plug to track it over time. I have a NAS with 16 HDDs, an outdated super overkill switch that I should replace to save some power, and a few old laptops.
It also might use some more power while transcoding for my PeerTube Instance or Jellyfin, and I have my desktop set up as a remote runner for the PeerTube Instance, so that uses some additional power.
~500W continuous, ~625W peak. To reduce this further I'd really need to start consolidating hardware. I do have one system that could be replaced with something more modern and would probably drop 20-30W. And my fileserver is a bit overkill as well so there could be improvements there.
About 113 kWh (155w) for me. I have 2 Intel NUC type devices, with two drive enclosures. Plus my networking equipment which include POE cameras.
About 100w on average for a nuc, 4 bay nas (only 3 in use), 4 poe cameras, AP, 2 switches, IP kvm, and the ups. Pretty happy with how little that seems to be for the amount there.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| AP | WiFi Access Point |
| ISP | Internet Service Provider |
| NAS | Network-Attached Storage |
| NUC | Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers |
| PoE | Power over Ethernet |
| RPi | Raspberry Pi brand of SBC |
| SATA | Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage |
| SBC | Single-Board Computer |
| SSD | Solid State Drive mass storage |
| Zigbee | Wireless mesh network for low-power devices |
[Thread #128 for this comm, first seen 13th Oct 2026, 23:00] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Server PC has a mean draw of ~46W
My various servers, firewall and nas are relatively power optimized. Everything including switches (most with some 10g ports) and access points is 160 W or so combined. I can't give you monthly usage, as I've got solar+battery so it's frequently just 0 kWh for some days. It's also rather hard to separate from the other power usage in the house when solar doesn't fit cover it.
Around 700W on low load, almost idle. Haven't had the chance to test it at full load yet.
It sits in my basement, so the waste heat is actually useful this time of year. Even more so when my basement would actually be freezing.
I plan on implementing scheduling where the two most power hungry servers are powered down and up as needed. The other two take almost nothing.
Also, the UPS supports a green mode that is a lot more efficient but with a downside of output side dropping out a few ms. This removes any conversion loss. I haven't tested whether my hardware can tolerate it yet, so for now I'm living with the conversion loss.
My house is powered by cheap hydroelectric supply, generated in a mountain roughly 5km from my house, so I'm not worried.
I can't believe I'm the lowest power draw at 50w. I thought that was pretty high.
That includes all my network hardware, my NAS, and my server. Basically everything that is "always on"
I mean, my phone charges at 60W. Granted, it's not charging 24/7 but 50W is pretty good indeed.
About 230w at idle with 3 servers, 2 routers, switch with PoE for umpteen devices, 16 spinning hdds.
Way too damn much, around 700w between 4 rack servers and associated gear
Wow, that's quite a bit.
If I recall right off hand it's 92 cores, 64+8+8+12 between them. Been looking to merge a couple of the smaller ones into the others but it's not a small task.
Around 150W for UPS, Mikrotik router, Pi 4, Proxmox/TrueNAS server with 8x SAS drives. Without the SAS drives I'd be closer to 50W, but how else am I going to heat up my cupboard? I got the SAS drives at a bargain price thankfully... I estimate about AUD300/year in electricity.
NAS sits at 24w idle. Security cams are drawing 19w of poe power, but I suspect there is a bit more being used in total. I have another NUC using probably around 24w max.
I'll slap some power meters on the switches and main nuc and try get some more accurate numbers.
90w here, so 65kwh/mo. Tinyminimicro server. Three pi (5, 4, 3B), fiber gateway, Mikrotik router, switch and two APs. Plus power gear (managed PDU and UPS).
My UPS says 116 watts right now, but it's probably not particularly accurate. That's running my pfSense box, NAS, switch, 2 access points, Starlink and a mini PC. That's with minimal disk and internet activity. My CCTV cameras and DVR use another 30 W in the day and 50 W at night.
i3-4160 running Proxmox (OPNSense VM and a couple of containers) with 3 spinny drives and no GPU, TP-Link 8x GbE switch, ASUS AX1800 as a Wifi AP, ISP's own manky cable modem, plus a UPS eats about 66-72 watts at the wall socket. If I install a passively cooled GT-710 for transcoding, it adds 10-15 watts at idle.
Just checked my ups. Looks like I'm currently drawing 125W. That's a NAS, 3 laptops, router, modem, AP, bookshelf pc, and switch.
65W for
- two Lenovo tiny proxmox nodes, each with nvme + SATA SSD + second NIC
- two switches (5/8 port)
- PCengine APU running OpnSense
- Raspi4 with Zigbee antenna
- Mini PC + JBOD (4 SSD in total)
- Small OpenDTU device
Keeping power consumption low was my design goal, but I eventually added the secondary NICs and additional switch for Proxmox replication and management traffic.
If btop is to be believed my server pulls a tiny 1.5W on idle. Given everyone else’s numbers I’m wondering if that’s true of btop is confused. It’s an old optiplex 3050.
Regardless my main rig which is regularly running expensive simulations is often ~200W so my server and home labbing is a rounding error
Unlikely, as it isn't being measured from the outlet. That being said, an idle server technically could be that low, but literally every part would have to be the most efficient version of what it is, and almost nothing happening on the server.
There are USB chargers that use more than that sitting at idle.
Yeah that was my feeling. It seemed unrealistically low.
Just checked my UPS. It sits at 105W for:
- HP Mini PC
- Synology 4 Bay NAS
- DrayTek Router
- Mikrotik 16 Port Switch
- PoE Switch
- 3 AP's
- 1 Raspberry Pi 3B
- 2 NanoKVM
Around 300wh.
- router
- sw with 4 poe cams
- 2 minipcs as servers
- pc used as nas with truenas
My nas takes about 40 Wh. And my network machine (proxmox + openwrt) about 20 Wh. When I upgraded my nas a year ago it was actually drawing twice as much, I have since then switched to more efficient processor (amd from normal to E) and I took out graphic card that I didn't use. I could have in theory merge those two, but I wanted to separate networking from nas+apps. I don't know how much my smart devices take but I don't have many so it can be up to 50 Wh total maybe. But that is more smart home than self hosting 😀
Around 90 Watts for modem, server (which includes router VM), network switch and access point. It runs on solar most of the time
NAS running ~15 docker (frigate, nextcloud, immich, plex etc), two windows VMs one is managing my NAS backups to cloud.
Couple RPIs one does Home assistant, one does pihole and weewx.
All my Network gear, and poe for APs and a few of my cameras,
2 x 12 channel whole house amps fed by 11 Chromecast audios (that's going to be a disaster one day)
That "idles" just under 300w but can obviously jump all over.
Rest of my security cameras are poe from another location (since I couldn't get the network drops back to the server room for the majority of the cameras, uses another 65w , but that's a bit misleading as it is picking up other things since it's not as isolated.
Currently, 2 servers and 2 3d printers, I'm running just over 200w at idle. Depending on what my printers and servers are doing at any given moment, it could go up to 2000w, total, but I haven't seen that high a power draw since I stopped contributing to Boinc projects about a year ago. I remember finding it mildly amusing that my graphics cards had a higher power draw then my printers.
My network and server setup eat about 200 W, split right down the middle. I have plans to cut the network consumption by replacing the PoE switch, so that I can use the savings to add another server.
So it'll still be about 200 W, but more useful.